Thursday, December 11, 2014

Calaveras Big Trees

We began our trip with an overnight at Calaveras Big Trees State Park in the Sierra Mountains. This state park preserves two groves of giant sequoia trees. Some of these trees are over a thousand years old, over twenty feet in diameter at their base and over two hundred feet tall.

It was neat to walk through this grove for I had it all to myself.

No one else was there to get in the way of my picture taking.

That is a lot of wood. Even when you are there it is difficult to comprehend the mass of tree standing before you.

They don't get much skinnier the higher you look up either.

It gets hard on the neck after awhile looking up all the time and the park service took that into consideration when they made these benches to gaze upon the trees by.

Our coastal redwoods are taller and sometimes close to the same size at the base as these sequoias but their pine cones are very small. Not so the sequoia.
This one was nearly the size of a loaf of bread.

Big difference from all that desert stuff I've been showing you the past few weeks, huh?

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